


how straightforward the game

by gisho



Category: Girl Genius
Genre: Standalone, attempted coup, shoddy worldbuilding, speculative post-canon setting, warning: I regard 'this is the most brutal you've ever been to your characters' as a challenge, warning: VERY DARK, warning: major character death, warning: psychological torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-24
Updated: 2018-02-24
Packaged: 2019-03-22 20:23:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,481
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13771845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gisho/pseuds/gisho
Summary: He came home by airship, and four nervous officers of the Black Squad met him at the airstrip and herded him into a closed carriage, somehow managing all the while to act like it was a protection detail, not an arrest.In which Tarvek joins in a conspiracy, and his family have to deal with the fallout.





	how straightforward the game

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from 'Endgame', from the musical Chess. This is for the fine folks in the nsfw_dark channel who egged me on. Enjoy - but be aware I meant the 'very dark' warning. 
> 
> I should also mention this is not part of the same continuity as my other fics, and not up to my usual standards of characterization and worldbuilding, being a few juicy bits from a million-word epic neither I nor anyone else has the patience for.

\---

Tarvek is more than a little surprised to wake up with his daughter leaning over him in a white labcoat, hair a frizzled mess. Her expression is invisible behind her goggles. She's always kept most of her expression in her eyes.

What surprises Tarvek is that he wakes up at all.

\--

He'd arranged to be away when the mess in Merano exploded; it seemed simplest. He came home by airship, and four nervous officers of the Black Squad met him at the airstrip and herded him into a closed carriage, somehow managing all the while to act like it was a protection detail, not an arrest. They hadn't so much as tried to cuff him. Well, to be fair, it wouldn't have helped. Picking locks was one of the first tricks Smoke Knights learned.

Castle Heterodyne had a basement's worth of oubliettes. They led him to a comfortably-appointed guest room instead, and shut the door with apologetic murmurs. A few seconds later the doorway was full of bricks.

"Really?" Tarvek said to the ceiling, and crossed his arms as he glared. "A lock wouldn't do?"

The window rattled in its frame and the bedcurtains billowed, for all there was no wind. "I was instructed to keep you secure."

"And you decided to do it with an excess of drama."

"You made her _cry_." The grating voice was the angriest Tarvek had heard Castle Heterodyne. "The Mistress and her other consort were up all last night. They looked for some way your name could be in Jesek's papers by accident. And then they screamed for a while. And then they cried. For hours. It would have been so delicious _if it were an enemy_." The Castle paused, probably for dramatic effect. "But you did that to the _Heterodyne_. After she saved your worthless life. After she did you the honor of letting you father her heir -"

"Can we leave Lilith out of this?"

"Lilith's been checking their work all day. _Frantic_ to prove there's been some mistake. That her father isn't a traitor to the same Empire he helped build."

Tarvek carefully settled into the armchair. The rest of the Black Squad must be out right now, picking up his co-conspirators. Barthold would probably be feigning innocence, for all that her move had been too explosive to ignore. Ragusa would have demonstrated more common sense, and made a full confession in an attempt to save his own skin. A futile attempt, to be sure. The Empire couldn't just _overlook_ an attempt to blow up the biggest Z-gas factory in the Alps while the Heterodyne was inspecting their new dynamo. It was a blatant assassination attempt, the sort of thing that would have started another round of the Long War in the bad old days. Add the suspicious uprisings in nine carefully selected towns, and it became a blatant coup. Ragusa was dead, but his confession might buy him a quick death and his body returned to his family, intact except the statutory holes through the brain. 

Panettone, most likely, was fleeing. They would have set Admiral Dupree on the hunt, and told her to bring him back alive, with no further parameters. 

"It would have been an absolute _pleasure_ to slowly crush you between two walls," the Castle went on, when Tarvek didn't make any protests. "Watch your bones bend under the pressure, until finally, one by one, they _snap_. Your blood would drip down the walls and your lungs would keep quivering, trying to draw in air without anywhere to expand to -"

"Then why don't you?" He wanted to scream, but it would have been undignified.

"The Mistress said you had to get a chance to explain yourself. A _trial_. What is the world coming to?"

Tarvek found himself covering his eyes with one hand, as if it would help. "There won't be a trial," he said, and took a deep breath. "With you, Castle, Heterodyne, as my witness: I, Tarvek Sturmvoraus, confess to treason against the Empire, conspiracy to murder Agatha Heterodyne, Gilgamesh Wulfenbach, Marshal Anne Bonham, and whoever else was in the blast radius, attempted technological mischief, and whatever additional charges a full review of the evidence brings, although the treason charge should really be all you need. Oh, right. I throw myself on the mercy of the court, such as it may be. Is that all?" 

"For now." The Castle sounded strangely subdued.

"Good. I'm going to take a bath, and then I have some farewell letters to write. Can you send someone with ink and paper, and the best brass pen out of my study?" 

"And why should I give a confessed traitor anything he asks for?" The voice got louder and louder, until it made his ears ring and the window rattle. 

Tarvek dropped his hand. "Because I'm sparing your mistress a lot of pain by facing this with dignity."

There was a horrible grinding noise, but the Castle finally admitted, "Fair point."

\--

The trouble with Angelo Panettone had been that he was _charming_. Tarvek knew from experience how the levers of the world could be moved with just your tongue. He'd done it himself, twenty-five years ago, smiled and persuaded and made glib remarks until the Fifty Families - twenty-seven surviving families, but nobody cared to change the name - fell in grumbling line behind the Empire, and settled in for a long few decades of complaining while the world sped past them. This lithe, intense man could have made them form a conga line. It was eerie. 

The good thing about Angelo Panettone was that he knew when to delegate, and there were other things Tarvek was better at than he'd ever be.

"It looks so small," Panettone said, and held the vial up to the lamp. "You said thirty would be enough?"

"Strategically placed, we shouldn't even need thirty," Tarvek assured him. "As long as we can ignite one of the holding balloons, there's a nine-in-ten chance of a chain reaction."

"As you say." Panettone pocketed the vial and turned his charming smile on his co-conspirator. "A toast, then? To the new empire?"

They clinked glasses and threw back the whiskey. It burned going down. 

Panettone stared at the fire afterwards, still fingering his glass. Tarvek sat down and took another shot. It was excellent whiskey and deserved to be savoured, but whiskey had never been his favorite drink. 

"You know, Sturmvoraus, we're lucky you joined in with us," Panettone eventually said. His voice, as always, was smooth and utterly sincere. "Not just the name. We couldn't have gone for the decapitation strike without your little vials."

Tarvek shrugged and filled his glass again. It was a bad idea, showing weakness by drinking so much, but Panettone wasn't looking at him at all. "You would have done it, even if you had to take the long way. Stirring up revolts, nationalizing the rails, marching east - you could have been on the borders of China in twenty years. The plan made sense." 

"Well, now we can do it in ten." Panettone raised his glass. "Won't it feel good to leave your daughter two continents?"

"Magnificent. They do say I'm a family man."

"What are you planning for the rest of them?"

"Why should I care what happens to Wulfenbach's children?" He let a little bitterness creep into his voice as he said it. "They're clever, I'm sure we can find jobs for them when they're old enough. If they swear allegiance. But - I agreed to be Agatha's _first_ husband, half a loaf and all, but if I'm going to split a loaf it should be with someone who can make it rise. To torture a metaphor."

"Star," Panettone suggested. "Rising star in the East. Why stop at Europa? There's a whole world to bring under our banner."

Tarvek raised his glass to that.

"I heard back from Countess Barthold at last," Panettone added. "She's in. It only took two weeks of waffling." He sighed, more disappointed than angry with the fickleness of his co-conspirators. "Dear Jeanette thinks she's found a man who can set things off in Handelheim, so we have nine uprisings primed.That should be enough. You know better than anyone how discontented people are with Wulfenbach ... management."

"Continuity," Tarvek said. "They want continuity. As long as we present a _fait accompli_ no one will complain. Well. No one who matters."

"Three weeks," Panettone answered. "And with any luck, it will all be over by Yule."

The man was an optimist. But maybe one had to be, to be a functioning megalomaniac. 

\--

"You don't have to do this," Higgs told her. Again.

He was leaning over to look her in the eye, because Zumathi was short even for a twelve-year-old. But she wasn't _young_. She took a deep breath, trying to ignore her pounding heart. "Somebody should. The twins are too little. Everyone else is too angry."

"They've a right," he admitted, and rubbed at his temple. "It's hard to believe. His Majesty was such a family man." And he'd told Uncle Higgs over and over that, as something approximating his brother-in-law, he was entitled to call Father 'Tarvek'. But Uncle Higgs had never budged, even when Father started to twig him with the 'Noble Wisdom' a Skifandrian princess's consort was entitled to. Father took it in good humour. Father had taken everything in good humour. Why was she thinking in past tense? 

"Well, maybe he'll tell me what he was thinking," she said, and crossed her arms. "Castle! Let us in!"

The Castle didn't bother to answer, only slid the bricks away from the doorway with a horrible crunching noise.

Zumathi marched in, Uncle Higgs trailing her like a porter. But at least he'd agreed to come with her. Moral support. Tarvek was sitting at the little roll-top desk, clutching his pen, but he had gone still at the noise of the door. He turned his head slowly, and the smile snapped onto his face. "Zumathi?"

He'd been writing. It looked like a hundred pages. In three days? He must have spent every waking minute at it. Zumathi stomped down her curiosity, and took three steps toward him. "Father," she said. 

"I wasn't expecting visitors."

"Mother said she'd come later. Father didn't want you dying early because he lost his temper." By some miracle she kept her voice steady. 

"So they do believe in equal justice." He winced. "And they sent _you_ to tell me? They should have left you out of it. That's cruel."

"I offered. I thought you'd rather hear it from me than the Castle."

"Well, it's only to be expected," Tarvek managed, and rubbed his eyes. "How long do I have?"

"Six days and a night. Until they're done with Panettone's trial." She took another deep breath, and tried not to burst into tears. "All the executions will be at dawn."

"Ten days from coup to public justice. Not bad at all. At least there's no time for any sympathizers to plot a jailbreak. Gilgamesh may be soft-hearted, but - Don't look so upset," he said softly, and ruffled her hair. "I'm sure he's softhearted enough not to dust off any creative methods. And you won't have to watch."

"I will, though," Zumathi whispered. 

"Of course you will. Well, as long as nobody invites Seffie. I don't know if she'd cry or gloat, and I don't know which would be worse."

"Beg pardon, your majesty," Uncle Higgs put in. He'd been so quiet Zumathi almost forgot he was there, standing by the door like a guard. "It's hardly a laughing matter."

Her father spread his arms wide, with a beaming smile. "Aren't I allowed a little gallows humour?"

"It's not usually that literal," Zumathi said. At least she wasn't about to cry anymore. 

"No, it'll probably be the block and axe, Gilgamesh is sentimental like that. Admiral Dupree must have caught Panettone by now, if they're setting up a trial. She'll want a good seat." Tarvek sighed and dropped his arms. "Higgs, can you see that she gets one? She'll never forgive me. I know it's petty, but if our little game is over, I want to win."

"If that's what you like." Higgs crossed his arms. "D'you have a funeral plan we should dust off?"

"I don't think traitors get funerals, do you? Body thrown to the ducks, more likely." 

Zumathi gave up, and wrapped her arms around him. He was trembling; she'd thought his voice wasn't quite steady. "Probably not," she told him. "There are three spouses in the family crypt who _did_ kill a Heterodyne. Just trying can't be enough to kick you out." 

"Well, that's a relief." Her father leaned against her, pressing close enough for his glasses to dig into her shoulder. "I have so much to do," he mumbled, almost a wail. "Twenty years of advice for Lilith and six days to write it down. You'll look after her, won't you, Zumathi? She's going to need so much help. You always think things through. Gil tried to run the Empire alone and he didn't sleep for two years, I don't want Lilith trying that when - eventually. She'll need you. I'm sorry, I'm babbling."

"I'll look after her," Zumathi said. It seemed like a ridiculous thing to say about someone ten years older, but what else could she possibly say?

"Thank you." Tarvek took a deep breath, and let go of her shirt, slowly and carefully. "I really have nothing to worry about. I've died before. It wasn't that bad."

"You _what?_ "

Uncle Higgs sighed. "It's not a story we like to spread about."

"People get so touchy about succession. But I expect you can keep a secret." Tarvek was smiling at her again, as if this were just another evening sitting in the library telling each other stories. Zumathi had heard How Gilgamesh Rescued Me From The Werewolves ten times, and The Escape of Lilith's Breakthrough Project, for all she'd technically been present at that one. "It was while we were repairing the Castle. Luckily your mother is a _very_ creative woman, and your father - he cared more than I had any right to expect. He must regret it now."

The silence thumped down on them like someone had turned on a Mezzasalma damper, because some thoughts are so big they drown out everything else.

Eventually Zumathi got the words in order, because she'd come here for two reasons. "Father? Why did you join the conspiracy?"

"Because I thought they were going to win," he said, still even and cheerful. "And who wouldn't want to conquer Turkestan? Lilith could have been Empress of China, and now all I'm leaving her is a stain on the Lightning Crown."

Zumathi could think things through. Tarvek taught her that. "And what would Panettone have been in this little plan?"

"Chancellor? Grand Vizer? Whatever title he felt like." Tarvek shrugged. "He wanted the power, not the name. I didn't care. He would have had a messy accident soon enough. Or I would. Exhilarating, really." His expression softened. "Everything I did made sense at the time. I won't insult you by apologizing."

Every answer she could think of was cruel, false, or both. Zumathi settled for, "It doesn't matter now."

\--

There had been one nice thing about their little conspiracy: no backstabbing. The only absences from the third meeting were Colonel Vonharache, called away by Imperial business, and Doctor Borean, whose lab had just that morning been ravaged by giant earwigs, what was the world coming to, she should go build a lair on a windswept mountain where _nobody else had tenure_. It had been ten months since the first meeting, and nobody had died. If Tarvek's family had been running this, there would only be three survivors by now.

Panettone moved fast, too. This might be the last meeting. 

"How about Prague?" their financier pointed out - he was named Zooks, but he was such a serious man no one could think of him that way. He pushed a map-weight aside and tapped the chart like an inspector checking rivets. "It will take a few extra days in transport, but we could gain weeks in production time if we offer overtime pay. A savings, all things considered."

Jeanette tapped her chin.  
"Will we be able to hide the clanks there?"

"They'll still be disguised as roadmenders. I doubt the Prague Auditors will give them a second glance." Their financier shrugged. "So there's a production backlog. Contract disputes, bad weather, you know how it is," he added, with the air of a man who'd explained idle equipment in warehouses a hundred times. 

There were nods and murmurs around the table. Tarvek sat back and fiddled with his glasses. Agatha had told him, not long after he switched to ones with earpieces, that it was a conspicuous tell and he should at least pretend to clean them. Agatha was the only one who paid that much attention to his moods. And it made sense to be nervous now, while they all sat around a map to work out the best places to spark a popular uprising. There could have been a Smoke Knight behind the tapestries, if he hadn't rolled them up to make sure. There could still be a recorder in the furniture, if anyone cared to record Panettone's drawing room. Why would they? He was one of a thousand competent, charismatic minor Sparks, and his grain trading company was a boon to hungry citizens, and if he had a poor opinion of Baron Wulfenbach, what of it? There was no law against criticizing the Empire. Shards and ash, it was _encouraged_.

"Does anyone know of a reason not to use Prague?" Panettone asked. There was a round of murmurs and headshakes. "Good. Bertram, I leave it in your hands." 

"I won't fail you, sir," the financier said. 

"Call me Angelo. We're comrades, aren't we?" Panettone smiled, friendly and sincere. "That settles our firepower. How about manpower? Have the Sons of Franklin seen the light yet?"

It was absurd, how plotting a revolution resembled a tedious board meeting. Maybe that was what came of putting a company president in charge.

Tarvek's chance to speak came last, almost at midnight. For most of the last year he'd only offered advice, intelligence, a handful of suggestions to keep them speeding forward. No reason to draw this all the way to 1921. No, with the key that Panettone with his instinct for drama had held back until the rest of their plans were on the table, it would be done in November. Tarvek leaned over their map and pressed the dry end of his pen to Merano. "I don't think most of you know what's in Merano," he began.

"Hot springs, isn't it?" their financier ventured.

"Magmatic hot springs," put in Lady Parrino, "and a Z-gas factory. Almost as big as the one at Aarhus."

Tarvek smiled at them. "A Z-gas factory with a new design of dynamo. A rather alarmingly effective design, which caught the attention of the Auditors, and which is currently undergoing six months of stress-testing prior to an inspection by the Lady Heterodyne, who's considering the design for installation at the Imperial Yards."

Parrino's eyes lit up. "They'll need extra storage for all the test production. It's amazing how easy Z-gas goes up, with the right catalyst. That was how my grandfather died."

Everyone at the table caught her meaning, of course. Tarvek only had to specify the date, after that, and confirm that he would provide the explosives. 

\--

The desk was a tiny rolltop instead of the oversized beast in Tarvek's proper bedroom, and he'd pulled the armchair next to it to catch the overflow of paper, but the sight of Tarvek slumped onto his desk in a convincing imitation of sleep was still so familiar it made Gil's throat hurt. He'd always tromped across the room making more noise than he needed to. Half the time he'd hauled Tarvek bodily out of the chair and thrown him into bed, and then Gil would sit down where he could ruffle Tarvek's hair, while they talked about whatever seemed too secret or significant to mention in daylight.

Gil padded across the room, as close to silent as he could manage, and laid his hands on Tarvek's shoulders. He didn't speak. 

It took eighty-one seconds before Tarvek spoke. "I thought you were staying away."

"I was, but I realized how cowardly it was." Gil took a careful breath. "Most of the time it's _not_ having you around that makes me lose my temper."

"Well," Tarvek pointed out, sounding more cheerful than he had any right to be, "you'll just have to get used to it."

He must have been leaving bruises with how tightly he was holding on to Tarvek's shoulders, but what did it matter? "I've had twenty-five years to get used to the other way." He was already sliding toward a growl. "You said you loved us. Did you change your mind about that? What did you want that we couldn't give you?" 

"Would you believe me if I said I loved you just as much as I ever had?" 

"After you teamed up with a jumped-up maniac in a plot to blow us all to bits? If his poor catspaw had known enough about explosives to add the right catalysts the Merano Gasworks would be a smoking crater right now and our daughters would be in mourning." Gil wasn't sure how he managed to say all that without screaming. "Of course they're going to be in mourning anyway."

The screaming would come later. Lilith had locked herself in her lab; Nausicaa, with unusual presence of mind, had locked herself in her bedroom with a keg of double-fortified lingonberry snap, because a breakthrough right now would end badly. More badly than usual. Zumathi had settled in the Green Bone Solar, the usual ganglion of government, announced that all business went through her, then begun forging Gil's signature on all business not related to Panettone's conspiracy. Such was the chaos of the moment, not a bureaucrat had protested at all government business going through twelve-year-old girl. 

They'd have to sort out what shouldn't have been signed. Later. The trials started tomorrow, and Tarvek wasn't getting one. 

Tarvek shrugged, as much as he could without lifting his head. "I would have died sooner or later." 

"Later would have better." Gil realized his hands were shaking, and made himself let go. 

"Well, you still have that option. There are plenty of nice ouiblettes around the place. I'd miss watching the sun set, but at least it would be out of the sn-" Gil's slap hit him on mid-word, and he jerked up in surprise. 

His eyes were wet. All the angry words Gil had been lining up tripped on his surprise, and what came out was, "Are you alright?"

"Of course I'm not alright," Tarvek whispered. "I'm going to die in five days." He took a deep breath and rubbed at his eyes. "It's fine. I knew the ouiblette wasn't really an option."

"No," Gil agreed. The words felt like they were being dragged out of him, like someone else was speaking with his tongue, except he knew exactly what that had been like and the presence was long gone. So was his father, heart finally worn out from too many years. And Boris from pneumonia, and Z in that awful volcano accident, and too many others, by mischance or time or his own cold calculation. And here Gil was about to kill his oldest friend. Again. "No, we can't let you live and still hang Panettone and Parrino without making a mockery of that government-of-laws you were so keen on."

"Still am," Tarvek told him, and pushed the chair back enough to look at him properly. "Leaving internal rule worked for your father, but it made the Empire too easy to fragment. And personal dictatorship is cruel to leave to your children." 

They'd had this argument a hundred times. It made it a little easier, to think abstractly. "At least we're demonstrating how far up it goes. How impartial."

"Lilith will make a good Storm King," Tarvek offered. "A more convincing one, after this. She'll have moral authority, and it will be a lot harder to accuse her of selfish ambition. Will you put these in order before you give them to her?" He waved at the piles of paper. "Most of it's just advice, but there are a few state secrets."

Gil glanced at the damp paper Tarvek had been lying on. It was in code, of course, but the familiar Heliphlex cipher that Tarvek wrote letters to his family with. He'd used Marchand's Substitutions with Panettone, but it hadn't helped.

If Gilgamesh let himself think about that too long he really _would_ strangle Tarvek here and now. The anger was buried, beneath a careful coating of principle and a thick drift of nostalgia, but it wasn't dead.

"Zumathi can sort them," he said. "She's been doing enough of my work."

"What, she still hasn't mastered Agatha's signature?"

"Not well enough to fool Herr von Mekkhan. Are you sure she's not yours? I know, I know, we timed it," he said, raising his hands, and it was so easy to fall into the familiar volleys of wit. "But I do worry about her."

Tarvek half-smiled. "Any Spark whose breakthrough involves the Pythian Graph Problem isn't the one you need to worry about. Worry about Nausicaa."

l"I do that too. She doesn't want to go to Paris, I can't risk sending her to Oxford, she's going stir-crazy here running out of Jägers to duel." At least the domestic problem is distracting. They've had this argument before. All the new arguments would be the soul-destroying ones. "I don't understand her."

"As long as she knows you love her, it will work out."

And there it was again. Gil took three steps back until he dropped onto the bed, because it was more dignified than strangling Tarvek. "You knew we loved you," he said, "and it didn't help." 

Tarvek took several seconds to answer. "There are more important things than love. You know that. Agatha knows that." 

"Ambition?" Gil realized his hands were clenched so tightly he was probably ripping the duvet. "How long were you planning this? Should we have had you poisoned as soon as the Other was gone, would that have spared us all the trouble?" 

"Not even two years." Before Gil quite realized what he was doing, Tarvek sat down next to him on the bed, and wrapped an arm over his shoulder in a horrible parody of comfort. He murmured, "Not until I thought there was another winning side to join. I wouldn't have betrayed you for anything smaller than most of two continents. You could have killed me off as soon as I'd worked out the anti-wasp formulas, but we had twenty-five years together instead, isn't that worth something? Gilgamesh, please don't cry, it isn't your fault." He was crying? He was crying, Gil realized, sobbing from anger and fear and the horrible horrible knowledge that Tarvek was taking this better than he was. Tarvek was, at least, still capable of talking. "Do what you have to do. I knew the risks." 

There was at least one thing he could do. He pulled Tarvek close and fit their heads onto each other's shoulders, and took deep breaths while he waited for his old friend's shaking to stop. 

After a while Tarvek mumbled into Gil's shoulder, "Will you tell Agatha I'm sorry?" 

"Tell her yourself," Gil said. "She said she'd come see you the night before the - the night before." 

"Alright." Tarvek took a deep breath. "Tell Lilith, then. She's the one who needs it more." 

\--

Ragusa had not been a stupid man, but he had been an unlucky one. His grandfather had picked the wrong side in the War of the Three Spindles; his father had invested the family's fortune in coal-fired airship engines. Ragusa had turned the remaining two warehouses and half-interest in a submersible into a massive fish import business, and befriended Angelo Panettone during an ill-fated joint venture into stargazy pie shops. It made perfect sense that he'd be scrabbling at the promise of prosperity, eager to help a friend. It still gave Tarvek chills to watch, the way certainty settled onto Ragusa's face. There were methods of mind-control meant to leave the subject happy and pliable, that still left more doubt in their eyes than Panettone with his charm turned up. 

"Are you in?" Panettone finally asked, eyes burning.

Ragusa blinked at them, and then his eyes snapped back into focus, like a man waking up from a theater show. "Of course. I don't know what I can do for you, but I'll do anything."

"You can bring us materiel," Panettone told him. "Lady Parrino can spread the word for us, Doctor Borean is providing a few helpful miracles, but we can't mass-produce miracles. Or death rays. You can smuggle in weapons the Auditors havn't dreamt of. Your submersibles run all over the Mediterranean." He beamed, clapping Ragusa on the shoulder. "Every army needs a navy."

Tarvek leaned back. The decorative spikes on the fence were digging into his shoulders, and the sea breeze smelled faintly of dead fish. "You can trust us."

"We need you," Panettone added, and that was a lie too. "And the first thing we need you to do is set up a pickup in Tripoli -"

It was easy enough to tune out. Tarvek knew this part already. He fiddled with his conveniently shape-muffling scarf, and focused on the distant lights of ships out of the corner of his eye, and the complaints of seagulls, mostly _Mine! Mine!_ with the occasional _Hurts!_ when they got too close to the defensive net over the oyster vats. Seagulls were like humans: they never learned.

He'd sat in on a few of these clandestine meetings now; there was a rhythm to them. Panettone would explain what he was doing, at his most passionate, then ask for a small favor as if it were absolutely vital, so his newest victim felt committed. Panettone wasn't doing it for everyone involved, to be sure, but he'd admitted to a hundred twelve. 

A hundred twelve fanatics, and who knows how many people convinced second-hand? It wasn't difficult. A murmur about some indignity real or imagined that Gilgamesh or his father had inflicted on them. A promise of a ten-percent tax reduction; people liked round numbers.

They exchanged smiles and code-keys, and Panettone turned back to his hotel, Ragusa to his office. 

Tarvek dropped over the fence - the landing made his knees hurt, but he kept it quiet anyway - and wandered off down the quay. With any luck, he looked like a passing drunk. The Storm King had no reason to wander along the docks at past midnight. He'd had no reason to leave the theatre with Panettone either, and they had managed it through a stage door with a little misdirection. It reminded him of sneaking around Paris, back when the world had been simple and he'd had so much less to lose.

He slumped artistically against a post and stared out over the Adriatic. It was a nice night, for February, and the sea was still enough to make out the interference patterns from ships surfacing half a kilometer out. If Agatha were here she'd look at that and wonder why they didn't build an underwater dock, the technology had been developed in England a century ago, and on the news that they didn't have a stable enough subsurface, would have started designing a better tunnel machine. 

She was one of a kind, which was for the best.

As he'd expected, Ragusa came past five minutes later, hunched into his coat, a harried businessman who just wanted to get home, far too late. He almost hurried past, but Tarvek straighten his shoulders just enough, and Ragusa pulled up short. "Your M - uh."

Tarvek smiled. At least the man had the wit to stop short of recognizing him in public. "No matter," he said. "We're alone."

"Your Majesty. What are you doing here?"

"Just enjoying the view," he lied. "Are any of these ships yours?"

"The _Tortellonus_ , right out there." He pointed at a hulking shape beside one of the more distant docks, sodium-yellow beacon glimmering off its hull. "She has a two-kiloton hold and four Wankel engines - only a hundred-fifty-meter depth rating, I'm afraid, she was built almost fifty years ago, but that's plenty for a cargo ship. My niece is the captain." He hesitated. "She'll help with the plan," he said, more to himself than Tarvek. "She'll understand."

Tarvek did his best to look reassuring. "Remind her everyone will be better off," he said. 

He would have felt bad for persuading the man, except that Panettone had done such a thorough job already. 

\--

There was something theatrical about this, except they were each playing for an audience of one - Agatha as Lady Heterodyne, green gown with gold trilobites for her belt buckle, her sigil pin, her hairclip; Tarvek in shirtsleeves with his greying hair loose around his shoulders, kneeling, the picture of Futile Repentance. There would be a costume change later, the dark purple coat he must have sent for from his own room already hanging off the bedpost. Of course he'd thought about it. 

Tarvek looked up through his fringe. "And the crew of the Tortellonus?" 

"Count as footsoldiers. We'll give them a lift back to Zadar once we catch the damn thing." This wouldn't have been the conversation Agatha expected to have, nine days ago. She took a deep breath. "Ragusa and Colonel Vonharache  
gave full confessions, and they'll get sedatives if they want them. Do you want sedatives?"

"I'd rather walk." Tarvek half-smiled. "Dragging out an unconscious body to turn it into a corpse isn't nearly as spectacular."

"Alright." Agatha bit back all the other remarks that threatened to boil over. At least Tarvek was willing to direct; she didn't have the heart. The natural thing to do would have been to reach over and run her hand through his hair, like she had countless times before. Agatha didn't move. 

After a few seconds Tarvek added, "Unless you'd rather I fall to my death trying to escape. I'm sure the Castle would be happy to -"

" _No._ " Agatha realized she was growling. "What's the point of public justice if nobody gets to watch?"

Tarvek conceded the point with the other half of the smile. "As you wish. Thank you for not letting the Castle have its fun earlier," he added. "I think the sight would have upset Zumathi. She's taking this harder than she wants to admit."

"Zumathi," Agatha pointed out, "is dealing with it by burying herself in paperwork. At least she plans to give us back the Empire next week. It's the twins who will take it hardest." She pressed her hands against the arms of the chair, holding them still.

Tarvek shifted as if he was about to stand up, but then went still again. "They're young. They'll forget." 

Knowing Tarvek, somewhere in the stacks of paper he'd displaced from the armchair were letters for them. He'd written what must have been a book's worth of advice to Lilith, a handful of letters - to Colette Voltaire, to Hadrian Greenclaw, to three professors at Mechanicsburg University - left lined up atop the desk. He had joked about writing his memoirs, back in the distant happy past of October, but probably not even the time-compression of fugue could have made nine days sufficient time for memoirs. It was almost enough to make Agatha feel guilty. Almost. 

"They'll remember enough," she told him.

Tarvek looked at the floor again. "How lucky they still have a mother and father who love them, then. And a home that's better defended than any town in Europa, surrounded by an empire that's just seen the disadvantages of disloyalty in detail." His voice dipped until he was almost whispering. "I could have died of anything. I could have met an assassin who was just a little too fast, or fallen into magma like poor Z, or caught the chloriatic fever before they were born. But I landed on the obvious conclusion. At least this way you have a good reason to dance on my grave."

"The _obvious_ conclusion?" Agatha wished there were something in the room she could smash. "Twenty-five years we've lived together, raised children together, run an Empire together, and you think it's obvious that we'd kill you and then _celebrate_ it?"

He answered, with the careful pronunciation of someone quoting, "You knew I was a snake when you took me in."

"There's a variation of the story," Agatha pointed out, "where one of the monsters decides not to act like it."

"And so the Baron spares her life. I know. I've heard it." Tarvek turned his hands over, the barest sketch of a what's-to-be-done gesture. "Some people can change. It was kind of you and Gilgamesh to think I might be one of them."

And Gil had been avoiding a last visit because he didn't want to lose his temper.

Agatha stood up, because there was only so much holding-back she could do while Tarvek knelt there and argued for his own irredeemability as if this were a philosophical debate. As if he weren't going to die in the morning. She didn't punch him. He wouldn't want to have a black eye; it would ruin the theater. "What would you have done next?" she asked. "If the plan had worked, and we were both dead and nine towns were in open rebellion?"

Tarvek smiled. "Exactly what you'd expect - you read the letters. Disbanded the Black Squad for their role in your assasination, made the rebels happy with a pile of half-measures and bringing in my co-conspirators to important jobs in the new government, killed off Panettone as soon as I had someone to blame it on. Unless Lilith had the sense to get us both first, but she's a better scientist than politician. She'll make a good Storm King, though," he added, and pushed his glasses up. "Will you tell her I'm sorry for leaving her the bag?"

Agatha couldn't take it any longer. She dropped to her knees in front of him - even through the rug it jarred her knees - and grabbed Tarvek by the hair. The kiss went on for a very long time. 

He didn't move his hands. It was just as well; if he'd dared touch her she might have started crying. 

When they finally broke apart Agatha was breathing hard. Tarvek just looked dazed, blinking over his smudged glasses like he couldn't think of anything to say. He lifted a hand, let it fall again. Agatha took a deep breath, and reached up to pull out her hairclip. Her hair came down with a shake of her head, and she pressed the hairclip into his unresisting hand. "Here. You'll need this."

"Agatha," Tarvek whispered, and then didn't say anything else.

Outside she pressed her shoulders to the bricked-over door and tried to steady herself. The Castle made a deep rumble, like the purring of the world's biggest cat. "Beautifully done, mistress," it told her, luckily in a low voice. "I've never seen someone so utterly destroyed."

"Castle," she hissed through gritted teeth. 

"He's lying on the floor, sobbing, and you can't hear it out here but there's this pitiful little keening noise -"

" _Castle. Shut it._ I have _work_ to do." 

\--

The trouble with parties was that they were so busy. It had taken Tarvek half an hour of surreptitiously trailing Panettone around the Countess Jeanette de Courcy's country manor to catch him between conversations near an empty room, and the room had turned out to be the butler's pantry. Well, it hadn't been very _likely_ the conversation would involve someone getting a serving fork through the larynx. It only took four minutes to work around to the topic of import. 

Panettone just raised his eyebrows. "That's quite the accusation, Your Majesty. Do you have anything but rumours and inference to back it up? I know there's a right to a _public_ trial, but I'd hate to think public opinion would be the judge."

It was the smile that decided him; if the man had been indignant, horrified, Tarvek might have settled for telling Panettone to take care and turning the matter over to the Smoke Wardens. He'd debated. But that was the friendly smile of a dangerous man, so Tarvek leaned in close. "You misunderstand, Herr Panettone. I want in."

"You what?"

"I want in," he repeated. "You don't agree with the non-interference policy. Neither do I. Scythia's a mess, someone should clean it up." He half-shrugged, the careless gesture of someone with more ideas than sense. 

Panettone allowed, "It would be - complicated."

"The Corbettites have helpfully run railroads for us, so supply lines are all taken care of.The Iron Sheik's old partisans are ... persuadable, now he's out of the game." Tarvek kept his smile on. "But that's all in the future. Right now, there are matters closer to home to take care of. Aren't there?"

Something shifted in Panettone's smile. It was the only outward sign of the wheels that must have been turning in his head. An offer like that one, from someone in Tarvek's position - it couldn't help but give him ideas. "Certainly."

"It's so good to meet a man who understands these things."

"Likewise, Your Majesty." He'd turned on the charm, and it was tempting to start thinking of him kindly. A Concerned Citizen. A man who wanted to spread the prosperity of Europa, in favor of civilization and progress. "I'm glad we're on the same side, and I can act without infringing on the rights of royalty. Perhaps restore them - certainly Baron Wulfenbach's shown no sign of caring."

Of course, Tarvek knew charm too well to be taken in by a friendly smile. 

"I'd propose a toast to our partnership, but - " Tarvek gestured around them at the racks of empty glassware. "We should get back to the party before they run out of spoons. But perhaps we could meet later on, and discuss these things in more detail?"

"Second wine cellar," Panettone answered at once. "Meet me there at one-thirty and we'll have that toast."

"Of course."

He couldn't help but wonder, as he slipped back to the light and noise of de Courcy's party, how long it would take for the plot to explode. It would be sooner with Tarvek there, to give them a hundred little nudges to stupid recklessness. They could absorb the energy of a dozen intractable conspiracies, and spend it on a grand, futile gesture. It wouldn't be hard. He just had to lead them to the ledge, call it The Edge Of A New Order, and watch them plummet screaming.

Not something he could leave to the Smoke Wardens. In fact, if they uncovered Panettone's plot early Tarvek would be in - severe difficulties. But that would happen regardless. He would go over the edge with them, if all this went the way he expected, branded a traitor for trying to kill the two people he loved most in the world.

He could still walk away. 

But that would leave Panettone to make his slow and certain moves, that nobody else had spotted or would, until in ten years he had half the Empire's government under his spell and an unstoppable avalanche of public opinion. No. Gilgamesh was no dictator like his father, to hang a man on suspicion, and no fool to make martyrs by shooting him in the dark. But the rule of law said nothing about entrapment, and Tarvek knew how to weave a trap. Let Panettone die of his own folly.

And if Tarvek died with him for the sake of a Wulfenbach peace - well. It was for Agatha. He didn't mind.

\--

Tarvek wasn't sure how long he took to calm down. Lying on the floor bawling like a toddler was undignified, not to mention pointless. But he'd waited until Agatha was gone, and he was done with Lilith's book - call it that, desperate and unedited though it was, because he'd separated out the state secrets in the abstracted hope it would still be useful to her children. He would have liked to meet his grandchildren, but it couldn't be helped.

He would have liked to see Lilith again, but he couldn't blame her for staying away. Well, she would be there in the morning.

The window was shut tight, and after three tugs and a brief and futile search for a crowbar, Tarvek gave up. "Look," he said to the window, "I'm not going to leap out and deprive everyone of their fun, I just want some fresh air. Is that against your instructions?"

"No," the Castle grudgingly admitted, and the window slammed up without his touching it. "But you'll get rain all over my rugs. Did you know that carpet was sent as tribute to Clemethious Heterodyne by the Sultan of Qalikistan?"

"That doesn't explain the bloodstains." The Castle was being dramatic; it was barely drizzling outside. Tarvek stuck a hand out to check. He could make out more lights than usual around Bill and Barry Square, and the beacon on the Red Cathedral was burning. "Are those why it's stuck in a guest bedroom?"

"Oh no. But Saturn thought it clashed with the drapes."

Tarvek turned away from the window; he didn't want to look at the Red Cathedral anymore. "You know, I hope you properly appreciate all the changes Agatha hasn't made. Color tile is cheap these days. You could have a facade like the Temple of Abiwatha."

"The Mistress has better taste than that. Except, apparently, in consorts." 

"It was fun while it lasted."

"Seven hours left," the Castle pointed out, oddly cheerful. "I could still have fun. You just have to be alive in the morning."

"And capable of walking," Tarvek pointed out. "And, ideally, smiling. Your mistress will be very annoyed if you ruin her show." 

There was a grinding noise, like some deep gear structure going wrong, but he knew it was only the Castle grumbling in annoyance because he was right. Even a petty bit of psychological torture like playing its waiting music all night would probably make Agatha melt down its weathervanes. If she wanted him to _suffer_ she'd have started by throwing him in a dungeon instead of a spare bedroom.

"Don't be so upset," Tarvek added, because there was no way he'd give up the last word with the Castle. "Look at this way - you'll get the pleasure of Agatha's company for decades yet. I'll never touch her again. That hurts more than anything you could possibly do to me." 

The Castle didn't say anything to that, and so Tarvek didn't point out how nice a view it would have. At least he would have a little peace and quiet, useless though it was to him now. The hairclip felt like a hot coal in his hand.

After a while, feeling like he wasn't so much deciding to move as tugging at the badly-fitted gear levers of his body, Tarvek walked over to the vanity. He set down the hairclip. He picked up the boar-bristle brush - like so much else in this place, there was a trilobite engraved on its back - and brushed out his hair, in even, repetitive strokes. He set the brush down. With one hand, he twisted his hair together, folded it up against his skull and back down; with the other he slipped Agatha's hairclip into place. Let people wonder.

He took off his shirt and splashed a little water on his face. He put on the clean shirt and jacket he'd sent for. He sat down in the armchair. He took out a handkerchief and cleaned his glasses. 

And then there really was nothing to do but wait.

Eventually the bricks began to roll away. Ah. Showtime. 

Tarvek stood up, and by the time the doors opened on two stern Fifth Regiment officers his smile was firmly in place. "Good morning," he said; better too cheerful than too solemn.

Neither of them quite had the stomach to return the greeting. One managed a stiff, sorrowful, "Your Majesty."

"Lead on."

It still wasn't quite raining outside the big golden front door, just the sort of miserable misty drizzle that got people wet from all directions, and the dawn light was barely starting to fight its way through the clouds. There was no one following. He wondered where his co-conspirators were; was he going first? Down the causeway, over the bridge, through Bill and Barry Square. The streets were deserted, which made sense. Anyone who could be bothered to get out of bed at this hour was in front of the Red Cathedral already making sure they had a good view.

And there they were, gathered around the low scaffold in a bedraggled mass. There were two massive soldier-clanks on each side of it, a smaller one atop it - that would be the executioner, clanks not being troubled by squeamishness. There was a ripple of noise as they walked into view, but the officer ahead made an abrupt turn, towards the Cathedral narthex, and so Tarvek followed. 

Four more officers were waiting inside, and two unconscious bodies on stretchers. Ragusa and Vonharache, who had the sense to cooperate and the further sense to take an early exit. Vonharache was hollow-cheeked, dark skin gone grey, already looking dead. The soldiers straightened up, and one of them twitched toward a salute, then cut herself off. Tarvek kept his hands still. It was easy, with his mind out of gear like this. He hoped his smile wasn't too ghastly as he asked, "So, the penintents go last?"

"Yes, Your Majesty. They're bringing the others down now. It - shouldn't be very long now."

He'd gotten enough of a look at the scaffold to count the nooses. None for the three lucky ones in here - it would be a swifter, surer end on the soldier-clank's sword, the closest to mercy they could reasonably be offered. How sentimental of Agatha and Gilgamesh, making sure he got a noble death when they must have been tempted to let the Castle have its fun. His throat hurt; he swallowed hard to clear it. Too many small mercies. At least he can wait out of the rain. At least they're out of sight. Despite the plot, despite everything, Tarvek had liked Panettone; he wouldn't have wanted to watch the man die.

Nobody else spoke, not even when they heard the cheer go up outside. People love a show.

Eventually a grim-faced officer came in to tell them it was time. Tarvek tugged his collar down. The soldiers picked up the two stretchers, and they filed out, still silent. The rain had trailed off while the sun rose. The crowd had settled down into occasional murmurs, satisfied by the first round of deaths. Someone had already cut the bodies down and covered them in black shrouds. Ready for burning.

Tarvek couldn't keep himself from looking around at the top of the steps. And there they were on the Cathedral balcony, with Marshal Bonham and Vanamonde von Mekkhan and Admiral Dupree. None of the Jägergenerals, although there were the usual sprinkling of green and blue faces in the crowd beside the standard beige and brown. The twins were absent, presumably excused on the grounds of being four years old, but there were a dark brown head of hair and two green ones. Zumathi looked stern; Nausicaa looked hungover. He could make out the dark circles under Lilith's eyes, but that was only to be expected.

"Do you wish to say anything, Your Majesty?" someone said. It must have been the officer who led him here.

Gilgamesh was frowning. He would have hated to hear how much he looked like his father. Agatha had her hand on Gilgamesh's arm, like she was keeping him from running off. Or keeping herself from leaping down to grab the sword and do the job herself. Tarvek had seen such concentrated fury on her face only a few times before.

He had to do this quickly, or he'd forget his lines. 

"Only this," Tarvek said, or thought he did; the dizzy rush of blood made it hard to hear. "Let this be the proof, if anyone still doubted, that the rule of law prevails. May my death serve the Empire better than I could serve it in life." That thumping wasn't his heart; it must be the soldier-clank moving into position. Quickly. Just a touch, to make sure Agatha's hair-clip was still there.

Tarvek dropped to his knees. Closed his eyes. Lifted one hand - the sword whistled in the air as the soldier-clank lifted it - and let it fall.

\--

What surprises Tarvek is that he wakes up at all. 

"Lilith," he tries to say, but it comes out a garbled mess of coughing. His throat is dry, and his neck is throbbing, and the rest of his body is reporting nothing but the stabbing of pinched nerves. Unless that's phantom pain. Is his body still there at all? Panicking right now would be completely useless - 

There's a touch of a gloved hand on his forehead, and he blinks, trying to force the room back into focus. Lilith's voice says, cool and gentle, "Yes, it's really me, you're really awake. It's the seventh of January, nineteen-twenty-one. The nerve pain should go away as you recover, but reconnecting a spinal cord is complicated."

A voice that sounds suspiciously like Gilgamesh puts in, "You should really be in a healing engine, but we thought we should make sure your brains weren't any more scrambled first. Can you talk at all?"

This time he decides to try for, "Water?" It's scratchy and each syllable hurts, but the word is clear.

Lilith's face comes back. She's shoved her goggles up; her eyes have the half-lidded look of someone relaxing for the first time in days. "Open your mouth," she says, and he obeys unthinkingly. The water is another shock on his damaged throat, but cold enough that it numbs it a little. 

Right. Time for the obvious question. "Why am I alive?"

Gilgamesh's face swims into view, eyebrows raised. "Because we worked out your game," he said. "It took a couple days, but we worked it out. You're not _that_ bad with explosives. The little vials you gave Panettone wouldn't have blown up a mimmoth nest."

Tarvek blinks helplessly. Who _checks_ that?

"Try wiggling your toes," Gil orders. 

He tries, not that he can feel his toes right now. Which is another odd thing. "Why aren't I on a post-revivification rush?"

Lilith leans in again. "Because your motor neurons are still regenerating, and because we used a trickle-charge. Modern medicine isn't all about giant flashes of lightning, Father. It is _nineteen twenty-one_." She vanishes from his field of view again. "Mother? I think he's ready for Switch Three -"

There's a discontinuity in his memory then, fuzzy around the edges like he had been knocked on the head, and he fights his way back to consciousness with the prickling pain in his neck. When he gets his eyes open again Agatha is sitting beside the slab.

"Do you remember what day it is?" she asks, brushing his cheek with the callused tips of her fingers. He can feel that just fine, and see the pale blue lamps, and hear the distant buzz of a battery pack charging, something ticking out of order. Lab noises.

"January seventh."

"Eighth now." 

"You were angry," he says, stupidly. Maybe the revivification did scramble his brains.

Agatha snorts. "You didn't _tell_ us. You spent a year leading Panettone into ambush, _alone_. Did you really think there were no better ways to deal with him?" Tarvek takes a deep breath, ready to explain why it was, but Agatha shakes her head. "Never mind that. I can yell at you later. Why didn't you even try to save your own skin?"

"Anything short of death would have looked like favoritism." Tarvek swallows; his throat has almost stopped hurting, but the ragged edge is still there in his voice. "Hating me should have made that easier."

"It wouldn't have been any easier to explain to our children." 

He would hide his face in shame, if he could feel his arms well enough to move them. They're probably strapped down anyway. Tarvek takes a deep breath. "Who else knows I'm alive? Did you tell Zumathi and Nausicaa?"

"We told them we'd bring you back before Zumathi told you that you were dying." Her voice is so acid it could etch brass. 

"So you _were_ being cruel to her."

"She volunteered." Agatha looks away. "You were the one we were being cruel to, keeping it secret." Maybe so, and maybe he could blame her now for the bottomless anguish of that last night, but he's inclined to call it fair payback for what he did to them. Just as well, really, that his acting was perfectly realistic. 

In the spirit of experimentation, Tarvek tries to lift his hand. He thinks he hears something go clink, and he absolutely does feel it, a dull pressure through the constant prickle, when Agatha grabs his hand and pins it to the slab. "Don't strain yourself," she tells him. "We didn't just flood your system with _elan vital_ in one go, so there's actual _healing_ still going on."

From somewhere across the room floats Gilgamesh's voice. "Told you he'd try something." There's a thump. 

Gil's here? Tarvek tries for an apologetic smile. "I'll have to get up and walk sooner or later."

"Later," Gilgamesh informs him, voice modulating as he walks closer, "would be better. You're stuck down here anyway until the whole mess isn't so fresh in everyone's mind.  
"

"What are you going to do with me then?" Horrible visions start to swirl through his mind, starting with the implausible one where he gets thrown out of Mechanicsburg in rags to make his own way in the world. 

High overhead, the ceiling makes its grinding chuckle. "We're going to have such fun together!" Oh, that doesn't bode well.

"What the Castle means," Agatha interjects through gritted teeth, "is that you're staying right here. We can hire you as a lab assistant, nobody will pay attention to one more construct around the place." Does he count as a construct now? They hadn't switched out any pieces, had they? "You'll never have to _leave Mechanicsburg again_. We can _keep you **safe**_." She bears down on the last word so hard it makes Tarvek's ears ring, the harmonics echoing where there hadn't been a hint of fugue three sentences ago. 

The knot in his chest untwists into a warm glow. They didn't just bring him back from some overblown sense of justice. They still want him around, even after what he did to them.

"If that's what you want," Gilgamesh adds. "We're not going to keep you prisoner." 

"Whyever not?" asks the ceiling. "He'd be so much less troubleso-"

Simultaneously, Gil and Agatha snap, "Shut up, Castle."

Tarvek can't stop the laugh that burbles up in his throat. It hurts, and there's enough hysteria in it that Gilgamesh abandons whatever he was doing to kneel beside the slab and stroke Tarvek's hair like he used to when something they tried in bed went horribly wrong. Agatha lays her hand on his cheek, and both of them murmur soothing nonsense while he tries to pull himself together. The absurdity of it all strikes him halfway through, and he has to start over. But eventually Tarvek shudders to a stop, and takes careful, shallow breaths while Gilgamesh pulls out a handkerchief to dab the tears away from Tarvek's eyes. "We are not keeping you prisoner," Gil repeats in a fierce whisper, as if Tarvek would _mind_. "You have at least one other job offer, if you'd rather never speak to us again."

"I would rather die than never speak to you again." Tarvek takes a deep breath. "It might be a good idea to go away for a while and let people forget what I looked like. Unless you changed that?"

Agatha offers, "Just a little, and not the face - here, I'll show you, don't try to move." There are two clicks, and she lifts his arm into his line of sight. He blinks at it. There's a scarred line of stitching around the wrist, now, and above it his skin is faintly grey-tinged, a shade badly suited to a human. Oh. Good idea; it will make the scars on his neck scream "built" instead of "resurrected". Agatha goes on, "You have white hair now. We didn't give you that, it happened on its own."

"Less recognizable. Good." Tarvek blinks a few times, trying to imagine it. Helpful, but it won't be enough if he ever comes home. He'll have to think of a disguise. 

"The job offer," Agatha says, "is from Higgs. He thinks we need someone to keep an eye on things in Scythia and you'd do better at telling _what_ to keep an eye than anyone we have there already." She's doing something to his neck; he can feel cold metal nudging his chin up. "Which is true, but I don't like the idea of sending you off into a quagmire like that. It's only a matter of time before someone is stupid enough to try rolling over the steppe with an army of giant clanks."

Tarvek points out, "Which is exactly why you need better intelligence." 

"Yes, but we don't have to send _you_ to get it." She scowls, but her expression softens after a few seconds. "You have time to think, anyway, I'm not letting you out of the lab until you can look over your shoulder. How's the rest? Can you feel this?" 

He can; it's something cold and metal pressed to his hipbone. They work through tests on the rest of his body with a clinical briskness that at least spares Tarvek the effort of thinking about anything else. He's not tired, exactly, but the effort of considering what to do with the rest of his life, when he hadn't expected to have one, leaves him dizzy and terrified. By the time they lift him into the healing engine the prospect of a day spent staring at the inside of its casing through a haze of oxygenated fluid seems positively restful. 

It's Gilgamesh, to his surprise, who leans close and plants a kiss on his lips. "Get some sleep," he whispers. "We'll take care of things."

\--

The coronation of the Storm King starts with an entirely inappropriate burst of sunlight. Not that strange for February, but a sudden reminder that this is meant to be an excuse for a celebration, and that despite the best efforts of a bloodthirsty populace and an eager assortment of street vendors, it really isn't. The new Storm King herself turns up dressed in pale grey, not exactly mourning colours, but something that paid more homage to the _storm_ than _king_. A brass band begins to play as she arrives at the bottom of the Castle causeway, and the ceremony has to stand still for a few minutes while the Watch hauls them away.

When she and her father planned this, Lilith had always thought her own children would be old enough to stand with her. Tarvek hadn't been so optimistic. But Tarvek had told Lilith more than once, with that bright, broad smile that meant it wasn't really a joke, that when she killed him she should make it _count_ , and frame someone _incredibly_ dangerous. 

It's a lot less funny to think of now. 

When she steps into the Red Cathedral the Muses are waiting, arrayed like a mural behind her throne. Otilia stands with wings half-folded and sword held upright. Like she's waiting for an excuse to strike. 

Lilith takes a deep breath, then begins to sweep down the aisle. Even on such short notice, the Cathedral is packed. Outside were interested tourists, local well-wishers, the same throng of the morbidly curious who'd turned up at the executions. Inside are the people who think they're important and who it would be undiplomatic to disabuse of the notion. Nobody was quite sure whether to dress for the occasion, and the pews are a blotchy mess of sombre grey and black and celebratory jeweltones, enhanced by the embarrassed blushes of a few idiots who'd gone for taffeta. Lilith hopes she makes a sufficiently intimidating impression on them. Her father had always suggested cloth-of-gold, since she had the complexion for it, but she thinks that hearkens a little too hard toward Andronicus. It is the twentieth century. She should start as she means to go on, by breaking with tradition.

In the absence of any children to make the point with, her mother steps forward to hand her the Lightning Crown.

The ceremony doesn't blur enough for Lilith's taste. She gets through the oaths of fealty hanging on to her temper with her fingernails, telling herself that Grandmother would be ashamed if she hauled off and punched her subjects no matter how much they deserved it. It would be hard to shame the Heterodyne name, but _Lilith_ is worth living up to.

At long last, so late it's early, Lilith makes her way to her mother's secret lab. All her parents are there already, and it should be a familiar sight, but the figure stretched out on the couch is just unfamiliar enough to be jarring - a bare scruff of white hair where there should be grey-streaked red spilling over Mother's lap. He's holding a letter in one outstretched arm, but when his eyes catch hers it flutters to the ground. "Your Majesty," he says. 

The voice, is all wrong, too, scratchy and weak like - like someone who hasn't quite recovered from a serious throat injury. Obviously. It shouldn't be surprising, she revived him herself, she's been down here every day, checking his progress, but it still feels wrong.

And the words are wrong. He shouldn't call her that. 

"I should bow," he goes on. "Give me a minute -" He's already half-upright, Mother's hand on his shoulder and a scowl on her face, before Lilith can step too close for him to get to his feet. 

"Try standing on protocol with me and I'll hit you so hard your head falls off again," Lilith tells him, in the comfortable surety that if there's one person who understands exactly why she's on the edge of murderous rage right now and won't hold it against her, it's her father.  
He raises his hands. "Alright. Sorry. Sit down?"

Lilith thumps onto the couch with considerably less dignity than befits a king. It would usually be Gilgamesh in this spot, but he's perched at the chemical sink, watching something on fire in it and not looking at them at all.

"It's amazing," her mother says in the tone of voice that means _it's alarming_ , "how many people wrote to assure the Storm Queen of their continued fealty. It's like they don't realize the title doesn't exist."

"They'll work it out eventually." Lilith forces herself to relax, letting her head rest on the back of the couch and not quite focusing on the ceiling. "Do you ever think the Athenians had the right idea about picking public officials by lot?"

Her mother snorts. "At least it made sure they always had someone new to blame."

It's maddening to think about, really. There's only so much control even a dictator can wield, on the economy, on the weather if they have the right machinery, on public opinion as far as their charisma allows for. Sometimes people can be threatened. Sometimes. Perfect obedience is only available to rulers who - not _dabble_ in mind control, but jump in with both feet. For everyone else, there's the delicate touch, or the angry mob to depose them. If the horrible mess that put Lilith on her throne early has a benefit, it's all the angry mobs Panettone set off that came to nothing. Bleeding off the bile.

Fear of angry mobs is a luxury she doesn't have, if Lilith wants to finish her father's work. Which she does. "I suppose people will just have to get used to blaming me for everything," she says. "They got used to Albia."

He doesn't turn around, but Gilgamesh chuckles. "Planning on living forever?"

"Not _forever._ A good long while." She shrugs. "A hundred years isn't even unnatural, if I avoid assasins. How many people in nineteen-ninety do you think will remember any other Storm King?" 

Tarvek has his hand on her knee now, like he's trying to reassure himself she's still there. "Make sure you have someone _competent_ to leave everything to," he tells her, as if she needs telling. "It took the old Master of Paris a few centuries."

"She'll manage," Gilgamesh says. The fire must be done; he dumps a beaker over it and spins around to look at them. "She'll manage _with or without_ your advice, Tarvek. Believe it or not, _you_ are leaving everything to someone competent."

"Maybe even so competent she doesn't need you to defend her."

It had occurred to Lilith sometimes that her fathers wouldn't stop fighting until one of them was dead. Apparently even that isn't sufficient. 

She looks over at her mother, who's rolling her eyes. Agatha says, "We're not going anywhere. And she has your notes, Tarvek, that's worth something."

Lilith frowns. "No, I don't. What notes?"

Amazingly enough, Gilgamesh winces. "The notes I've been too busy looking after this idiot to put in order for you," he admits. "He wrote - a lot of advice, the week before - All the papers are in my bedroom." 

It's not surprising. It's exactly the sort of thing her father would do, because he worries too much. But she wraps an arm over his shoulders anyway, and earnestly tells him, "Thank you."

"It was the best I could do," Tarvek whispers, and leans toward her, dropping his eyes. The scar stands out on the back of his neck, a pale twist dotted with dark stitches. Lilith sets her hand there so she doesn't have to look.

\--

Two days later, a truck - one of the newfangled steam-driven kind - full of preserved snails leaves Mechanicsburg heading northeast. Between two barrels in its cargo hold, a white-haired figure sits, wrapped up in layers of scarves in the way of a badly-made construct hiding their face, with a warming blanket for the last layer. The drivers check the barrels before they go, but never see their passenger.

Six days later, an evening passenger flight from Iasi to Odessa takes off with twenty-three passengers, six crew, and three empty compartments. The last passenger to board, a tall fellow in a veil and scarves, refuses dinner through his compartment door in a rasping voice; the purser says "Yes, sir" and thinks _Construct_ and promptly forgets it when the next passenger throws a screaming fit about the absence of courgettes.

When they land the veiled passenger hurries away, slipping into the throng at the dock. He slips past the cab-stand, past the gleaming sign imploring visitors to take the tram to the Monstrous Staircase, past the less gleaming posters advertising hotels, past the tired passengers waiting for rides. Eventually, he ducks into a shadowy alcove of the terminal building, shoves his hands into his pockets, and whispers, "I know you're following me. Why?"

The figure that darts around the corner is lithe, muscular, and eerily familiar, but in his exhaustion it takes Tarvek a second to recognize. Nausicaa's been dying her hair green so long that the natural blonde looks wrong.

"I wasn't going to let you go off to Sarugrad alone," she informs him with a grin.

"Do your parents know you're here?"

She pokes him in the chest. "Now one does. You spotted me quicker than I expected."

"Alright, I walked into that. Does your mother know you're here?"

"I left a note. Come on, Dad, you need the backup."

Backup, yes, but he'd planned to recruit allies once he was on the ground. It would be tricky. The Pontic Steppe is a dry field waiting for a light. Fear of the Iron Sheikh had kept its little states quiet and their giant deathrays secret, but that fear won't survive the Sheikh's death. There will be civil war in Mesopotamia. North of it - the Empire could exert a little influence, steer the chaos to their benefit at best. At worst, protect the neutrality of the railways. They need to know who's hiding deathrays and who's about to wave around a shiny piece of pipe with a beer bottle stuck to it. And both those categories hold enough people who'd try to kill Tarvek on general principle for asking nosy questions. Maybe he does need someone he can trust right away.

And Nausicaa needed to get away from Mechanicsburg, and Gilgamesh's nervous overprotectiveness that five children hadn't quite shaken, and the smothering weight of expectation. All the worse for Nausicaa, because - well. Tarvek takes a deep breath. "It won't be safe," he says. "Especially when you hit breakthrough. The Khatun doesn't -"

" _When?_ " she interrupts. "I'm nineteen. My _little sister_ broke through, and not a flash from me. It's not always heritable. I'm not a Spark. I might as well stop waiting." 

There's something more dangerous than usual in Nausicaa's eyes, and she's blocking Tarvek's exit very effectively. He lets himself slump against the wall. Revivification fixed the persistent ache in his knees, but the twinges of static are still dancing on his nerves, an inevitable reminder of just how stupid he was. "Well, I can't stop you following me," he allows. He really couldn't. She's the daughter of the two stubbornest people he knows, and she inherited it. The look she's giving him reminds him so much of Agatha it hurts.

He misses Agatha already.

Three years. If he can set things up, Tarvek can go back in three years, when the twins are old enough to keep a secret. He can send them letters as soon as he gets to Sarugrad. And meanwhile, he won't be as alone as he thought.

"Exactly," his daughter tells him. "You might as well not try." She plucks the bag off his shoulder, and slings it over her own as if it weighed nothing at all. "C'mon. Morning flight, right? That means we have all night to work out the best cover story." 

\---


End file.
